


iambs

by TSwiftEliot



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: F/F, Inspired by Poetry, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 03:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TSwiftEliot/pseuds/TSwiftEliot
Summary: Umi is self-aware enough to know when she's being unfair. This fic is written in prose.





	iambs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/gifts).



> poems referenced are "mad girl's love song" by sylvia plath, that "shall i compare thee to a summer's day" sonnet by shakespeare, and "the love song of j. alfred prufrock" by t. s. eliot, which i picked because they were famous and these lines were iambic pentameter.  
> you can check out the original prompt, and others, [here](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/22249.html?thread=11760617#cmt11760617)

_I think i made you up inside my head_  
  
At age sixteen, Umi Sonoda goes through a crisis. It's very hard, she thinks, and very unfair, to expect her to call Eli-senpai by name. A challenge, targeted at her, monumentally more burdensome than what the others have to bear. How can you just be on first-name terms with a model citizen? An ideal?  
  
Umi knows the point is to bring her senpai down off a pedestal. But maybe she doesn't want to.  
Maybe she's in love with a version of Eli that doesn't exist, and she doesn't want to learn the truth, just yet.   
  
And therein lies the crisis.  
  
Umi is being a bit unfair, herself.  
  
 _Thou art more lovely and more temperate_  
  
Nothing Eli does in the succeeding months breaks the pedestal. It gets worse. Let Umi count the ways:  
  
Her looks were stunning, up close. People remarked on Eli's blonde hair a lot, or her long legs, but Umi's heart stopped for those eyes. They were a pale blue like ice, like you'd see on a white tiger, and the way the black of her pupils stood out against them made Umi feel like Eli could see the increased pace of her heart behind her sternum. It occurs to Umi that she might be mistaking a biological fear response for infatuation, but they were practically the same thing.  
  
Eli's conduct, too, was fearsome. She took them all to task over choreography, flawlessly disciplined in her own execution. Umi was a little ashamed of herself, for the way she thought she was getting along, patching their dance moves together for them. She thought she was okay at it, really something praiseworthy, but- Eli was serious. Umi's arms prickled like when thunderclouds were near, thinking about it. She wanted to be serious too.  
  
Probably the most baffling bit of it is that Eli is nice to her. Umi drinks it up like a desert plant. Which is to say: it's so much, too much for her, that she might wilt and drown.  
  
 _To wonder do I dare and do I dare_  
  
Umi is aware it's not her place, to do anything about this. She's blessed enough to have a reason to see senpai multiple times a week.  
  
She doesn't even know what she'd want out of... it. Were she to... what. Confess? Like a crime. In the back of her head, Umi thinks she really just wants Eli to take the reigns and show her a proper time. An intense, appropriately passionate romance, one that hits all the checkpoints (birthdays, festivals, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's) that Umi thought she'd never get to have.  
  
It seems like an unreasonable imposition to both burden Eli with her feelings and require her to put in the effort of leading Umi through a satisfying relationship, though. This isn't  _Maria-sama ga Miteru_  where an onee-sama takes Umi under her wing and it plays out pure and beautiful, instead of short skirts and sore muscles and lozenges and sweat.  
  
Besides, Umi is not presumptuous.  
  
So she does nothing.


End file.
